Gordon Young is a visual artist
who focuses on creating art for the public domain. His work ranges from sculptures to typographic pavements for places as disrelated as government headquarters and village squares. The common denominator for all projects is the basis of relevance to the surroundings.
About
Gordon Young is one of the UK’s leading artists in the field of public art. With over 20 years experience he has created projects as diverse as a series of 20m sculptural/climbing walls in Blackpool, a forest of typographic trees in Crawley Library, a Wall of Wishes in a Bristol school, and a cursing stone in Carlisle.
Gordon’s latest and most ambitious project to date is the Comedy Carpet, an 1,880m2 granite typographical pavement made up of jokes, songs and catchphrases of comedians and writers which will be permanently installed on the new promenade in front of Blackpool Tower.
Gordon has a collaborative approach to working and has built up over the years strong and fruitful relationships with a diverse range of people from architects, landscape architects, graphic designers and engineers to foresters, cyclists, librarians, ornithologists, historians and code breakers.
Public art is not only about ideas and concepts, it is also about delivering on time, in budget and of the highest quality. Gordon has a close and committed team of artists and producers and together they have a proven track record in realising ambitious projects of the highest quality within given timescales and budgets.
Contact
info@gordonyoung.net
Links
Why Not Associates
PACE
Stanton Williams Architects
Feilden Clegg Bradley Architects
Wilkinson Eyre Architects
Speirs and Major Associates
LDA Design
Penoyre & Prasad
Ronnie Heeps
Chris Levine
David Kemp
Owen Cunningham
David Smith
7 Stanes
Yorkshire Sculpture Park
Awards
— Marsh Award for Excellence in Public Sculpture, The Public Monuments and Sculpture Association, The Marsh Christian Trust, 2012
— Designs of the Year Award nomination for Comedy Carpet, Design Museum, 2012
— Blackpool Civic Trust; merit award for Comedy Carpet, 2012
— Grand Prix 2012 for Comedy Carpet, Tokyo Type Directors Club
— Designs of the Year Award nomination for Crawley Library, Design Museum, 2010
— RIBA Award for Crawley library with Penoyre & Prasad, 2010
— Blackpool Civic Trust; merit award for Climbing Towers & Bouldering Wall, 2007
— Language stone award, 2006
— ‘Grand Prix’, Tokyo Type Directors, (First Prize) for Flock of Words, Morecambe, 2003
— Art for Architecture Award, Royal Society of Arts, 2001
— Civic Trust Commendation and Street Design Award for Eric Area, Morecambe, 2000
— Civic Trust Commendation, 1998
— Street Design Award, Royal Town Planning Institute, 1998
for Loudoun Hall Forecourt.
— Museum of the Year Award with Jersey Heritage Trust For Maritime Museum Jersey, 1998
— Lancaster Civic Society for Stone Jetty, Morecambe, 1996
— Working for Cities Award, British Gas Properties/Arts Council, 1995
— Art for Architecture Award, Royal Society of Arts for Tern Morecambe, 1994
— Hull Civic Society Commendation for Fish Pavement, 1993
— Art in Public Spaces, Northern Electric/Arts Council for Gateshead 1993
Selected Talks & Judging
— Lumen Prize, Treberfydd Foundation, 2012
— EMZIN, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2012
— ESAD - Escola Superior de Artes e Design, talk & workshop. Oporto, Portugal, 2012
— Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts, London, 2012
— Poet in the City, Design Charette, York House, Twickenham, 2012
— RIBA 4x4 making Places: Size Matters! The Rose Bowl, Leeds Metropolitan University, 2012
– Konstfact University of Arts, Crafts & Design, Stockholm, pro funnibono publico lecture (for Storytelling, Textile in the Expanded Field course) 2011
— Italian Visual Communication Designer's Association, Design Per conference, Bologna, 2010
— The School of Architecture, University of Naples, The theatre in the city seminar, 2010
— University College of Falmouth, 2010
— Central St Martins, M.A Narrative Environment, 2010
— Key Speaker, The Angel Symposium: the effect of public art on regional culture, economy and politics (part of Angel of the North 10th anniversary celebrations), Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, 2009
— Key speaker, City & Art Forum, Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Istanbul, 2009
— Longley Park Sixth Form College, Firth Park, Sheffield, 2009
— Central St Martins College of Art and Design, London, 2008
— Poets In The City, German Gym, Kings Cross, London, 2007
— University for the Creative Arts, Epsom, 2007
— Brunel Academy, Bristol, 2007
— Royal Society of Architects in Wales, annual conference, Cardiff, 2006
— Littlehampton Community School, West Sussex, 2006
Selected Articles
2012
— Novum Magazine, Munich, December
—Pen, Tokyo, October
— Étapes: Design and Visual Culture. Paris, August
2011
— Le Courrier du Bois, Belgium, January
— Creative Review, October
2010
— Area, No.111, Florence, July/August
2009
— Creative Review, March
— M.E. magazine, Milan, September
— Artlab, Milan, September
2008
— Letter Arts Review, USA Spring
— Summit: 49, British Mountaineering Council, Spring
2007
— Landscape magazine, February
— Creative Review, May
— Wallpaper, August
— iSh magazine, Singapore
— Concept magazine, Jakarta
2006
— Creative Review, April
— Touchstone, September
— Etapes: international, September
2005
— Creative Review, May
— Disegno Industriale, October
2003
— Creative Review, April
— Domus, December
— Art and Architecture, issue no 59
2002
— Eye magazine, Autumn
— Creative Review, September
2000
— Crafts magazine, January
— Motorcaravan, Motorhome Monthly, August
— Livewire, August
— Druk, Netherlands, Autumn
Selected Publications
— Tokyo TDC, Vol 23, 2012
— Seven wonders of the Typographic World by Steven Heller& Miro Ilic, Monacelli Press, New York, 2012
— Which Way To Go? by Miguel Abellan, Monsa Publications, Barcelona, 2012
— Paranormal Cumbria by Geoff Holder, The History Press, 2012
— Local Heritage, Global Context (Heritage, Culture and Identity) by John Schofield & Rosy Szymanski, Ashgate Publishing, 2011
— Space & Environmental Graphics, Rikuyosha Publishers, Japan, 2010
— Virtual Typography by Matthias Hillner, AVA Publishing, Switerland, 2009
— Art and Text, Black Dog Publishing, 2009
— City and Art Project, Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Istanbul, 2009
— Creative Island 2 by John Sorrell, Laurence King Publishing, 2009
— Typo: the beautiful world of fonts by Fabiola Reyes, published by Monsa, 2007
— Weird England: Your Travel Guide to England's Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets by Matt Lake, Sterling Publishing, 2007
— England in Particular, [a celebration of the commonplace, the local, the vernacular and the distinctive] by Sue Clifford & Angela King, published by hodder & stoughton, 2006
— Artists and Public Space, Black Dog Publishing, 2005
— Why Not 2 published by Thames and Hudson, 2004
— People Making Places: Imagination in the Public Realm, published by Public Arts, 2004
— Tokyo Type Director’s Annual, 2003
— Art, Space and the City by Malcolm Miles, published by Routledge, 1997
— Celebrating Local Distinctiveness, Common Ground for Rural Action, 1994